When I was in high school in Istanbul in the mid-1980s’ post-coup Turkey, we had a class named Milli Guvenlik (‘National Security’) and we had a retired colonel as a teacher for it. The subject itself was a form of military indoctrination in the line of ‘every Turk is born a soldier’.

It was also a set of instructions on the superiority of the so-called Turkish nation. There was a section in our textbook, for example, that described ‘Turkish character’ which included generosity, mercifulness, and humility. I kid you not.

As for the Ret. Colonel, the consensus among my fellow students was that he was a complete nutter, even though he did indoctrinate well like that US Marine trainer in Full Metal Jacket. I have about 10 schoolmates from those times on my FB friends’ list who can jump in to correct me if I’m wrong.

One of the favourite lines that this Ret. Col. repeated often -he taught the same subject in all other classes so he must have repeated that line dozens of times- was “zafer sungunun ucundadir”; that is, ‘victory is at the tip of the bayonet’. This meant that a state cannot win a war by destroying a target from the air or from the sea. The state must send in the infantry to destroy the enemy at bayonet point.

Another one of his lines -this one not oft-repeated but stuck with me for decades anyway- was that “you cannot win a war by taking enemy territory, you win wars by destroying the enemy army”. This line to me was always counter-intuitive. How is it that you do not achieve victory by taking territory?

It was only later in life, when I developed an interest in Roman history, that I understood what the Ret. Col. meant. During the Second Punic War (218-201 BC), also known as the war of Hannibal, the Roman army suffered successive devastating defeats against the Carthaginians in the Italian peninsula. Rome raised another new army and this time appointed Quintus Fabius as the new consul and general.

Quintus Fabius decided that he was not going to risk losing another army in battle, so he avoided a direct confrontation with Hannibal. Thus the two armies chased and harassed each other across the peninsula for 5 years until Hannibal’s army was worn down and he was ordered to retreat to Carthage. It was the ‘Fabian Tactic’ of preserving the army, not the direct confrontation, that eventually won the war for the Romans.

The moral of the story is that the Turkish-jihadi barbarians won territory in Afrin, yes, but they failed to destroy the lightly-armed YPG forces there. The YPG avoided a certain defeat by not engaging in a direct confrontation with the invaders. The pull out of thousands of fighters in battle conditions appears to have been smoother than Peshmerga’s chaotic retreat from Kirkuk.

The second moral of the story is that Afrin is largely intact, although the enemy’s bayonet has reached it. The city has not been destroyed along with thousands of civilians, not because of the invaders’ genius, but because of the defenders’ wisdom. The invading barbarians are now looting the city and are trashing the character of the Turk.

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It was only 10 days ago, following the fall of Jinderes, that we discussed the possibility of YPG withdrawal from Afrin. “The YPG cannot in good conscience wage a prolonged battle in the city if civilians refuse to leave their homes as it seems to be the case,” I argued here on this page.

That day arrived on Sunday, as the YPG pulled out of the city in the dark of the night along with 150 thousand civilians who also chose to leave. Two days earlier the Turks had launched an indiscriminate artillery barrage into civilian areas, a day earlier Turkish jets struck Avrin hospital. So the invaders did mean to level the city and to kill as many civilians as it took to capture the city. The YPG had to withdraw.

So what happened to the 10 thousand lightly-armed men and women of the YPG/YPJ and allied Arab forces under the SDF umbrella? The YPG statement released hours ago says “our forces are everywhere in Afrin” and that they would launch an insurgency. This suggests some fighters have gone underground. Other reports suggest the YPG ‘melted away’ among the civilians leaving Afrin.

However the YPG left Afrin, theirs was not a chaotic withdrawal under enemy fire a la Dunkirk. Kudos to the YPG for an orderly pullout under no reported enemy attack and with no reported casualties. If the YPG succeeded in saving 2/3 of its fighting force in Afrin, if 2/3 of the 10 thousand made it to safety, then that is a good outcome for they lived to fight for another day.

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Jinderes town has fallen and the road to Afrin city is now open to Turkish-jihadi barbarians. The YPG can only slow them down, not prevent their arrival at the gates and into the city.

The dilemma facing the YPG generals in Afrin now is to either send away the civilians from the densely-populated city and fight to the death in the forlorn hope that help might arrive as was the case in Kobani, or to preserve their lightly-armed forces by pulling them out to Manbij where the Turkish-jihadi barbarians intend to head next.

The YPG cannot in good conscience wage a prolonged battle in the city if civilians refuse to leave their homes as it seems to be the case. The Turkish-jihadi barbarians have the firepower and the willingness to level Afrin city and to kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to capture it. The YPG may have to consider withdrawing their forces to fight another day.

The third possibility is to invite Syrian Arab Army proper into Afrin. In effect that would amount to surrendering the YPG forces to the Assad regime. Even if the YPG surrenders to the regime, the bulk of the best-armed regime forces are fighting in Eastern Ghouta at the moment; the regime forces in Aleppo cannot resist Turkish jihadi invaders if the attacks continue.

There is the fourth possibility: the YPG forces do not surrender to the regime but withdraw from the city to only be replaced by the regime forces. The question is whether this will be sufficient for Russia to order a halt to Turkish advance, or whether the momentum to take Afrin is too great for this possibility to have any effect.

If Afrin city was to be evacuated of all of its civilians, that would have started already with the fall of Jinderes. Since there does not appear to be any civilian movement out of the city, the YPG may well have to withdraw their forces to Manbij where the USA has promised to protect them.

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Several days ago, following a brilliant surprise air and water borne raid, US-backed Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic forces (SDF) landed to the south of Tabqa Dam, securing it before Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis could cause any damage to the structure. Now SDF has taken Tabqa airbase too.

Long-term observers of the war in Syria will agree that the fall of Tabqa airbase to ISIS in August of 2014 was one of the more infamous episodes of the war. The Assad regime had just lost Raqqa city and had withdrawn to the surrounded airbase—their last holding in the entire province. There were over a thousand soldiers trapped in the base with dozens of aircraft, tanks and artillery—not enough to stop the ISIS juggernaut.

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Evolving realities on the ground in Syria for the last 3 years. Syria would have been lost to radical Islamism, had it not been for the Kurdish resurgence beginning with the US support in the liberation of Kobani in late 2014.

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Remember the jihadi selfie at the gate of Kobani? How times have changed! This is me writing on 16 November 2014 when the battle was raging on inside Kobani:

“There is still a long way to go in this battle. Once the Kurdish Stalingrad is completely liberated, the YPG and allied forces will begin to expel ISIS from nearby villages and the country side until the entire Kobani canton is also freed from medieval barbarian invaders. This war will not end until the forces representing life, liberty and modernity march into Raqqa, and destroy the forces representing medievalism, death and darkness in their place of origin.”

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Here is an interesting cartoon that highlights something that is neither seen nor discussed both by the PKK supporters as well as its opponents: the PKK is a confused and divided organisation. Although they all seem to work together in concert, one side destroys what the other side builds.

It can’t be an accident that the cartoonist Yahya Alselo has shown the YPG, YPJ and one of PKK’s charismatic leaders Murat Karayilan on the side that builds something, while other unpopular leaders Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan and the PYD’s Salih Muslum are those who destroy it.

It has long been my argument that within the PKK there are two factions, even though they both profess to follow the teachings of the great dear leader Abdullah Ocalan who is imprisoned on a Turkish island.

One faction, led by Karayilan, is more nationalistic, pragmatic and is close to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, while the other faction, led by Cemil Bayik, is still old-fashioned communist, dogmatic and is closer to whoever they can take advantage of, which is lately Baghdad, Tehran and Moscow.

I have long copped a lot of flak from friends who support and oppose the PKK for my arguments that it is not a monolithic organisation and that within there are differences of opinion that might well end in open armed conflict, especially if Kurdistan Regional Government declares independence.